Celeste Bradley - [Heiress Brides 01]

by Desperately Seeking a Duke

  Phoebe shook off her twitching impatience and began to move past him. If Marbrook wasn’t here, she was going to put crickets in Sophie’s bed for this prank.

  A large hand wrapped itself about her arm. Shock went through her at such outrageous insult. “Sir! Unhand me at once, or I will forced to report this misconduct to my fiancé!”

  He gazed down into her face, his brow clearing as if he’d only just realized something. “Ah.” He released her, although not without a lingering touch that made her think he rather liked her.

  He stepped back and a slight, rather creaky smile crossed his lips. “Miss Millbury, we seem to be laboring under a misunderstanding.”

  She raised a brow. “I understand that my fiancé is within his rights to slap his glove across your face.”

  The smile didn’t fade. He bowed. “Miss Millbury, Lord Calder Marbrook, Marquis of Brookhaven, at your service.”

  Wrong. Very, very wrong.

  “Ah—” She cleared her tightened throat, forcing a normal tone. Something bad was nipping at her belly, sending darts of fear through her. She’d done something wrong and she was very much afraid she knew what it was.

  The fellow bowed, then raised his gaze to meet Phoebe’s shocked one. “My dear, I am your fiancé.”

  Chapter Seven

  The Marquis of Brookhaven stared at her for a long moment, then blinked. “Forgive me. What did you say?”

  Phoebe froze. She’d said “bugger” right out loud, like a common street urchin, except even a street urchin would refrain from saying it directly to a lord’s face!

  “Sugar!” Which was meaningless, but she pasted on a winning smile. “I’m supposed to ask Cook to buy more sugar! If you’ll excuse me for a moment?”

  With the insane smile still on her face, she turned woodenly and walked away from him. She went through the first door she came to and shut it behind her. With a thump, she let herself go limp against the wood, disregarding the latch pressing into the small of her back.

  “Oh, damn, blast, bugger!”

  What could she do? Explain to the marquis that she’d meant to accept another man? That would likely go down well. Of course, he’d want to know who, and she could hardly turn around and marry his brother without him noticing!

  There was no help for it. She couldn’t leave him standing in the hall much longer. She must simply tell him, now, before this went any further. Taking a deep breath, she pasted on a polite vicar’s-daughter smile and left the room.

  He was right where she left him, in the same position with the same, vaguely impatient expression on his face, like a toy soldier abandoned after play.

  Wild giggles threatened to bubble up. Phoebe suppressed them with difficulty, for the situation was heartbreakingly ridiculous and she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  As she approached her fiancé, she eyed the powerful and wealthy Marquis of Brookhaven, most emphatically not the man she knew as “Marbrook,” and tried frantically to think of some way to explain her hideous—although completely understandable if a person stopped to think about it—mistake.

  Then someone rapped the front knocker in a peculiar, five-point manner—a habit that Phoebe was very familiar with.

  Oh, God, no. The vicar.

  That was all it took. The strength left her knees and her belly went icy with old fears. The new woman was gone. Only the old Phoebe remained to face what the new Phoebe had mistakenly wrought.

  She must have breathed the name aloud, for Brookhaven brightened. “Ah, excellent. Your father and I have much to discuss and this shall save time.” He granted Phoebe an approving nod. “Most efficient of you to arrange it.”

  Most efficient of her to arrange her most embarrassing admission to simultaneously humiliate herself in front of both Brookhaven and her father?

  “Yes, well, I do have a knack,” she said breathlessly, scrambling panic rising within her. She was definitely going to cry—or worse, laugh in a fit of unstoppable hysteria. She could hide, but that wouldn’t work for long.

  And there was Marbrook. What would he think of her when he learned of this?

  Despite her panic, the thought of Marbrook soothed her somewhat. Marbrook would understand, once she explained things to him. He might even be able to think of some way out of this mess!

  She cleared her throat, trying to think quickly before the vicar made it past the butler. “My lord, tell me—” Quickly! “Your brother, Lord Marbrook—” Was that correct? She scarcely knew, although Brookhaven only gazed at her attentively, so it must be. “When will you be informing him of our … ah, match?”

  “Oh, Rafe already knows,” Brookhaven said. “As a matter of fact, it was his idea. He thought you and I might suit.”

  Rafe? Was that his given name? How manly—

  His idea?

  No, that could not be right. “Lord Marbrook? Are you sure? Is he about your height and coloring, with similar—” Similar everything and of course it was the same Lord Marbrook.

  Pain lanced through Phoebe’s heart, laying it open in such a way that she suspected it would never heal. His idea.

  Marbrook had met her, talked to her, taken her into the dark garden and proceeded to make her fall entirely in love with him—had almost-not-quite kissed her!—then had suggested his brother marry her? Like some sort of—of—agent?

  She’d been an idiot again, when she’d promised the vicar—and herself!—so fervently that she wouldn’t be.

  Her chest ached as if she hadn’t breathed in far too long and a sort of strange clarity came over her vision.

  Then the vicar was there, engulfing her in an awkward but enthusiastic hug. That bizarre occurrence alone was enough to snap her from her strange sinking moment, but then he kissed her forehead and said the words she had longed to hear all her life.

  “You’ve done marvelously well, my dear. I’m very proud of you.”

  Words she’d never hear again if she broke this engagement.

  It was so clear. If she spoke up at this moment and announced her mistake, there would be no more awkward hugs, no more pithy approval. She would instantly go back to being the vicar’s wayward daughter, who must be watched like a thief lest she backslide into her old ways.

  Old pain swirled with new pain and Phoebe buried her face in the vicar’s weskit as she’d not been permitted to do in so many years. He seemed somehow less in her embrace—more worn and thin.

  Frail. What a strange word to describe her tall powerful father.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, picturing the man she’d seen for so long, even as he’d begun to disappear into the man now before her. The vicar had always been angular and just a bit looming … but now he only seemed somehow breakable.

  The shock of white hair, the emphatically bushy brows that added weight to the sharpness of his icy blue gaze … still there, yet thinner, less vigorous.

  Age had an end. She would never have believed that there might be an end to the vicar … until now. The pain and loss of years welled up within her. So much wasted time …

  It doesn’t have to be that way anymore.

  The weight of responsibility settled upon her with concrete permanence. With so few years left, could she deny them both this chance to make them good years? The sensible thing to do would be … to take what she’d been offered and be glad of it.

  The tears came then, quiet hot ones that leaked from her eyes despite her best effort at control. “Oh, Papa …”

  Astoundingly, the vicar merely put his arms about her and patted her rather too firmly on the back. “There, there, my dear. I suppose a bride is entitled to a bit of an exhibition, as long as she keeps it among family, eh, Brookhaven?”

  Brookhaven cleared his throat. “Might I assume there won’t be many such occasions?”

  The vicar chuckled crustily. “Oh, no need to worry about that. My Phoebe is a most sensible young lady.”

  My Phoebe. My dear. Words she’d ached for.

  She had inadvertently m
ade her father’s dreams come true.

  What of your own?

  Despair and loss mingled with the desire for more of the vicar’s rare approval. Phoebe inhaled deeply of the vicar’s tobacco-scented weskit, then straightened, dabbing at her eyes with her demure-vicar’s-daughter smile upon her face. “Pray, pardon my excess, my lord, Papa. I am quite all right now.”

  And she was.

  No you’re not. This is not how it is supposed to be and you know it.

  Yes, she was. She was engaged to a fine, handsome, wealthy man who just might make her one of the richest women in London—and she was basking in the vicar’s unqualified approval for perhaps the first time in her life.

  What wasn’t fine about that?

  Something inside her gave a last despairing wail, and then finally, thankfully, shut up.

  Chapter Eight

  The early sun still slanted through the windows of Brook House, but each moment passed like an hour in Rafe’s swirling thoughts. He’d tapped the brandy decanter immediately after Calder’s departure this morning, but the fragrant amber liquid wasn’t up to its usual ability to make him forget.

  Now he stood, white-knuckled fists braced on the window frame, staring unseeing at the street visible from the front of Brook House.

  Calder was engaged to Miss Phoebe Millbury.

  His Miss Millbury!

  Rafe had tossed and turned all night, trying to compose the perfect “this is romantic, not raving mad” proposal to present to Miss Millbury.

  He tried to shut out the memory of himself humming the latest off-color ditty as he’d tied his cravat and pulled one of his signature silver-buttoned blue coats on over his shirt and waistcoat.

  Downstairs in the breakfast room, Calder, of course, had been up for hours. Rafe had joined him silently, still pondering the best way to present his potential engagement to his brother. Calder had casually cleared his throat.

  “You should be the first to know, Rafe. I took your advice and this morning I received word that Miss Phoebe Millbury has consented to be my wife. Her aunt has guardianship of her for the moment, but Lady Tessa believes there will be no objection from the girl’s father. Thank you for saving me much tedious study and consideration.”

  No.

  For an eternal moment, Rafe could not draw a breath. Then, through the roaring in his mind, he’d managed to speak. “It has been only hours since the ball.” His voice had croaked. He hadn’t cared.

  Calder had only chuckled, apparently oblivious. “That sort of thing does not take long if one employs the right people to investigate. She is entirely suitable; although her great-grandfather was in trade, there has been adequate rise in the family’s station so that the difference is not inappropriate. She brings no wealth, but then, I don’t need it.”

  Still Rafe could not breathe for the fury that consumed him. Once again, the ripest fruit fell easily into Calder’s oh-so-deserving hand.

  But wait … simply because Calder had proposed didn’t mean that—

  “She accepted my offer with dispatch,” Calder had gone on to say. “I find that admirably decisive, don’t you? Miss Millbury must be a very practical, nonromantic sort.”

  With dispatch. She hadn’t even hesitated, it seemed. And why would she? That moment in the garden, that soft whisper of possibility that had hung in the air between them … in truth, he’d been the only one to feel it.

  Cain and Abel—murder between brothers. Vengeance on a biblical scale sounded good just then.

  Rafe couldn’t kill his brother, but he could sure as hell pound his face into the marble floor of the foyer and relish every moment of it.

  Phoebe.

  Rafe’s hands had clenched into fists, snapping the fork’s mother-of-pearl handle in two. He hadn’t noticed the stabbing pain as the edges dug into his flesh.

  As much as he hated to admit it—and it took several snifters of brandy to make him admit it—he had no one to blame but himself. He could see so clearly where he’d gone wrong.

  Hindsight was no comfort to the loser, however. The fact that he’d turned Calder’s attention to Phoebe like a well-trained pointer indicating a choice fowl to the hunter only made the facts all the more agonizing.

  Of course, then he spent a good hour telling himself that one moonlit evening in a garden with a saucy and delightful angel didn’t matter at all.

  Then he swung back to blaming Calder for yet again taking everything good for himself.

  And she had accepted—how could she have accepted?

  How could she not? A girl like that, a vicar’s daughter—what was she to do, turn down the richest man in London? “No, thank you, my lord. I don’t care to be your marchioness.”

  Well, Calder wasn’t the richest man in London—quite. He wasn’t the most powerful either, although there were only about four or five others above him. He was handsome as well, since he looked a great deal like Rafe—and Rafe had never had any complaints. So how could one expect a young woman fresh from the country to say no to the Marquis of Brookhaven?

  Perhaps none of that is the case. Perhaps she simply likes him better.

  Everyone else does, after all.

  The better man.

  Their father, the previous marquis, had said that many times to Rafe in his wastrel days. “Thank God that Brookhaven will be in the hands of a better man than you!”

  Hating Calder and despising Phoebe, while darkly entertaining, was not going to supply an answer for this dilemma.

  What was done was done. Calder could hardly break his engagement without disgracing the woman and damaging his own closely protected reputation—something Calder wouldn’t do.

  Phoebe, on the other hand …

  He rubbed a hand over his face. She’d seemed the perfect answer. So sweet, yet full of earthy warmth.

  And exhilarating. He smiled slightly. Sweet yet tart, dreamy yet spirited.

  No. She’d never back out of the engagement. A girl like that didn’t change her mind once made. It killed him to think of all that loyalty and sweetness wasted on dour, automaton Calder.

  Nor could he in good conscience say a word about last night. It had been innocent, for the most part. He would not compromise the lady.

  He straightened, a quiet, despairing certainty settling over him.

  Rafe looked down at his hands, which were still fisted and pale of knuckle. He willed them to open and relax.

  So now Calder had it all. The estate, the title—

  And her.

  His fingers curled with old fury once more.

  THE GUEST PARLOR in Tessa’s rented house was a formal room carefully decorated not to give offense, which only made the mingled bland floral and muted stripes jar Phoebe’s eye in their own way.

  Or perhaps it was just her. Perhaps this was all some sort of ghastly dream, the sort one had when one overindulged on chocolates. No, it was all horribly real. The vicar was beaming, Tessa was trilling, Deirdre was looking on in sardonic silence, and Sophie was gazing dreamily at the window.

  Phoebe sat in perfect stillness on the settee next to the Marquis of Brookhaven and tried dutifully to listen over the buzzing in her ears. The world had an eerie sharpness, yet the color seemed leached from Tessa’s salmon-pink gown and the vicar’s dark coat.

  Seated next to her, Brookhaven was garbed in perfect black and white. Phoebe herself was in proper virginal white muslin with nary a sprig or pattern. Together they seemed a proper indication of her life to come.

  Black and white. Wrong and right. No room for error. No easing of expectations. No freedom. No laughter.

  No passion.

  For Brookhaven, for all that he was every bit as young and handsome as Marbrook, seemed rather more like the vicar at heart. Both men were strict with themselves and others. Both men had precise views of the rules and obligations of their positions. In fact, the resemblance in their personalities was so striking that Phoebe took a certain dismal comfort that she was not to marry a complete strange
r after all.

  Yet Phoebe couldn’t suppress the notion that the vicar had aged in the last week since she’d seen him. Or had she stopped noticing at some point as she had sleepwalked through her life in Thornton?

  The vicar seemed inordinately worn by his short journey back from the next county where he’d been visiting friends. Subsequently, the drive through Hyde Park had been canceled in favor of tea in the parlor.

  All of which was magically accomplished without any of the ladies managing to put in a word. Brookhaven certainly had a commanding air about him. Even Tessa’s sullen staff jumped to carry out his every wish with alacrity.

  Now, the vicar turned to her at last. “Well, my dear, you’ve done nicely for yourself, I must say. He’s a capital fellow. I couldn’t have chosen better myself.”

  Then why don’t you wed him?

  Oh, heavens—she hadn’t just said that aloud, had she?

  No, no one seemed shocked or taken aback. In fact, the insipid smiles just went on and on. It had only been that the irreverent remark had sounded so loudly and defiantly in her head that she could have sworn she had voiced it.

  Brookhaven seemed equally pleased with the vicar. “How gratifying to learn that Miss Millbury has been influenced by such sensible thinking all her life. So many young ladies these days seem to have no thought in their heads but balls and gowns,” he said approvingly.

  Phoebe had the sudden mental image of him patting her on the head. Good dog. Just let him try it, she thought in a giddy panic.

  Phoebe saw Deirdre bite her lip, hard. At least she wasn’t the only one who was bursting to round on the pompous Brookhaven. Then Tessa placed an apparently affectionate hand on Deirdre’s shoulder—and squeezed until her knuckles turned white with effort.

  Although it had to have been extremely painful, Deirdre never twitched. She only maintained her vapid smile while patting Tessa’s hand with daughterly affection.

  Phoebe was distracted from her own predicament for a moment by the way Deirdre had taken the painful abuse with such casual familiarity. It seemed all was not as perfect between the two as Phoebe had thought. Perhaps it was better to have a father like the vicar after all.